Various forms of automated spaghetti and pasta cooking apparatuses have been employed to prepare large batches early in the day, held in appropriate temperature-controlled storage, and reheated just prior to serving. The resulting product has degenerated substantially and is normally considered unsatisfactory by fine restaurants who specialize in serving gourmet "al dente" pasta.
A number of various approaches for achieving desirable results in a spaghetti, pasta and food cooker are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,430,553; 3,608,473; 3,827,344; 3,937,135; 3,958,503; and 4,214,514, among others. However, many of such references are for "dose cookers" enabling individual portions of pasta which includes spaghetti, macaroni, noodles and other similar products to be cooked and processed before serving, and some of the devices have been utilized for rapid and controlled cooking in hot water using metered quantities of the products to be cooked including service for fast food establishments.
The present invention endeavors to provide a controlled cooking environment for pasta that will enable an eating establishment to provide a wide range of requirements for the blanching, cooking and rinsing cycles including a pre-set cycle to achieve a gourmet presentation for individualized portions of pasta including fine-tuning of temperature controls of the heating medium in separate compartments, agitating individual compartments that contain separate servings and utilizing a minimum of energy for heating the water that is to be consumed in each cycle and to avoid starch buildup on the equipment.
A primary objective of this invention is to provide a spaghetti and food cooker in which individualized portions may be cooked simultaneously in spaced temperature controlled baths for predetermined cycles and readily removed after a predetermined period of time depending on the varieties of pasta to be cooked so that freshly cooked individualized portions may be served.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a spaghetti and food cooker in which a series of individualized compartments contain a portion of product to be served that may be blanched, cooked, rinsed and removed at predetermined cycles of operation to achieve maximum control over the product to be served.
Yet another objective of the present invention is to provide a spaghetti and food cooker in which individualized portions are segregated into a series of separated individual compartments which are displaced or rotated within separated chambers containing water baths for blanching, cooking, washing and rinsing, under temperature controlled conditions, and displacing the series of compartments containing the individualized portions to be served from one heated chamber to another automatically for a specific period of time that may be modified for the particular product to be cooked.
Other objectives and many of the advantages of this invention will become more readily apparent to those skilled in the art of spaghetti, pasta and food cooking taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawing and claims in which equivalents and modifications are contemplated.